The Role of Civil Society in Empowering Women and Adolescent Girls of South Asia: Challenges and Prospects
- Dr Surendra Kumar Mishra*
Empowerment of women and adolescent girls
implicitly assumes that in all societies, men control women—or, to be more
precise, men control at least some of the women of their social class, particularly
those in their households and families. Hence, women and girls are a “class”
in the two-class gender stratification system, that is governed by shared norms
and values, and has a cultural as well as relational and/or material component.
It recognizes that individuals belong to and are strongly influenced by social processes
that are integrated by common ideological or normative systems. These ideological
systems make prescriptions about many fundamental principles of social life, for
example, how to organize families, how to allocate wealth among different groups
or individuals, and how to organize relations between males and females etc. Thus,
the perceptions, tastes, and choices of individual decision-makers are strongly
influenced by the nature of the ideological or normative systems to which their
social processes subscribe and into which they have been socialized. For those interested
in development, then, understanding gender systems—not just the situation
of individual woman or girl—is critical. Therefore, empowerment of women and
adolescent girls need to focus on the rights, obligations and resources granted
to females versus males under different gender systems rather than on the characteristics
of individual woman/girls or groups of women/girls.
The role of civil society in taking it forward is the key to development and hence,
is the matter of great concern in the resource-poor countries around the world.
Despite constitutional safeguards, economic development and changes in social attitudes,
women and girls in the region continue to face various difficulties and discriminations
in many aspects of their lives. Many, if not most, of these difficulties can be
traced to cultural and social norms that have persisted in maintaining a patriarchal
society in these countries despite several guarantees of gender equality in the
constitutions of most of the countries in the region. This problem has been recognized
by civil society organizations (CSOs) during the start of this millennium. This
was more or less reflected in framing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in
2000. In some of these countries, even when laws defending the right of men to use
violence against women are repealed, the culture that created them continues to
exert a tremendous influence over behaviour; the situation is worst across many
countries stretching from the Mediterranean to the edge of South Asia, especially
in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh. However, during the last two decades,
things are changing fast in favour of women and girls, but not up to the desired
extent by the world order. Time has come to discuss all this, taking the challenges
and prospects into consideration and to propose a clear pathway right now to achieve
the set targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
Despite progress over the last twenty years, still gender equity and equality remain
a distant goal, not an achievement for the region. The empowerment of women and
adolescent girls is restricted to a flawed system of reservation and subsidization
that is flawed yet becomes a necessary step for many of these countries in the region
to help more women to enter the economic and political domains. Additionally, more
independent women political leaders need to emerge without the assistance of political
and influential families as a normal part of the decision-making process, who will
take the agenda forward. Political measures and milestones may bring effective changes
in the social and cultural beliefs; however, such changes cannot be imposed on a
diverse and huge population through a top-down approach. Instead, change must come
from within the individual, whose beliefs and actions in turn will help gender equity
and equality to be achieved in the long run and in a more sustainable manner. To
be precise, economic and political empowerment is not an end in itself; this will
be sustainable when women-groups become stronger as a social force, which provides
social status to members; to function as a forum for discussing shared problems;
and becomes a power to reckon with for taking joint actions with men and force the
society to bestow the leadership status to women without a quota system.
This write-up emphasizes on a pathway, where the processes will guide the broadening
of choices, the expansion of options, and the provision of alternatives available
to women and girls in determining the course of events, which will shape their own
lives and determine their destinies. Thus, it is a process which enables them to
change the balance of power in social, economic and political domains in society.
A new pathway can advocate more for political empowerment of women and girls, i.e.
giving them maximum participation in decision making processes and power sharing
in the representative bodies, access to property, productive assets, common land
and financial assets etc. Hence, all future efforts in improving their empowerment
should focus more on improving the agency and resources dimensions. Here itneeds
to deal with the deep-seated traditions, social and religious norms that hinder
women and girls’ agency that is key to sustainable development goals in post-2015
scenario for civil society organizations. In nutshell, it includes the improvement
of available resources and its effective utilization in an efficient manner such
as better access to quality education, economic participation, enabling social environment,
universal health coverage, favourablelabour laws, inheritance and property rights
that are essential for continued progress in empowerment of women and adolescent
girls of South Asia.
The Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in South Asia have a long way to go when
things are becoming difficult for them in the emerging political scenarios of some
of the countries in the region. Lack of clear political will, economic recession,
social exclusion, and cultural intolerance are some of the challenges that they
must face in coming ten years down the line. Special platforms are required to discuss
these in detail and to chart out a possible pathway that might take the women and
girls forward in overcoming these obstacles and help them to achieve their objectives
by 2030 in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
*Dr Mishra, a Post-graduate in Social Sciences and Doctorate in Culture Studies
has almost 42 years of field experience in Social & Behavioural Sciences Research
and Communication. He served for nearly twenty years in academic institutions and
6 years in Europe as a Senior Fellow of UNESCO. For more than two decades in three
continents viz. Africa, Asia and Europe, he has led several Civil Society initiatives
in Health Innovation, Research and Communication, funded by major national and international
donor agencies. He has authored 3 books and published more than 60 research articles
in national and international journals. Till 2009, he was teaching &guiding
the Post-graduate students of the Public Health Faculty at Jimma University, Ethiopia.
Since 2010, he is mentoring many Civil Society Organizations and Academic Institutes
in South Asia.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this commentary are author's personal
observations.